MungBeing: The Body a full-figured megazine with a healthful and realistic self-image. Given only one option, there is no dichotomy. It's what's INSIDE that counts! http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html Copyright © 2005, Pencil Tenet, Inc. Wed, 01 Feb 2006 12:57:53 -0800 Thu, 25 May 2006 15:09:51 -0700 Forward http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=298feed@mungbeing.com (The Editors) Forward -- My Temple's Closed On Weekends link
Discovering various parts of the body occurs on a daily basis. And each new discovery elicits some pretty funny reactions from our baby. The discovery of HANDS the other day reminded me of someone on acid, what with the slow moving fingers in front of the face and the intense stare and all. I could almost see the trails myself. We laugh, of course, because it's really funny and heartwarming. How does the baby react to our laughing? With a big ol' smile and a laugh because everyone is having fun.

Babies don't care how their actions will look to others. Being self-conscious is a learned behavior, I think. Self-awareness is something altogether different, of course. That's what the whole process of discovery is about -- finding out what bodies do and how the different parts interact. Why, just the other day while getting a new diaper installed, our baby reached down and grabbed a handful of genitalia (not mine). I've heard tell of parents saying "No!" to their babies and pushing hands away but I think that's silly. There's nothing wrong with discovering that you have genitalia. I think that people tend to ascribe intent upon a baby's actions and interpret what a baby does through a lens of their own hang-ups. Some of this is a natural reaction, trying to learn how to read what a baby's needs are, but some of it is just reading too much into it. Sometimes a baby is just a baby.

And as our baby grows and develops, I've been taking a closer look at my own body. I'd pretty much stopped looking at my body after high school because I just didn't care that much. I mean, I noticed if there was a lump or a defect or some other anomaly but I mean looking at my body as something "other", something outside of myself, you know? One thing I found was that I didn't recognize the back of my hand anymore. I saw a photograph of our baby and there was this weird old man's hand in there and I remember thinking, "Whose hand is that? Who's the old man...". And it was mine.

Our bodies change and continue to change throughout our lives but the images and impressions that we develop early in life that we hold in our minds seem to stick around a little longer.


]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=298&subID=296feed@mungbeing.com (Mark Givens) Forward -- sexually transmitted warts and all January 30th, 2006

I'm awake. It's criminal. I haven't slept yet. Eleven hours sleep yesterday, five in the ay em 'til four in the afternoon. Feeling guilty at having slept 'til the sun started going down again, I immediately hopped out of bed, popped some Ritalin and went straight to work, well into the morn. MungBeing is due in a couple of days: editing submissions, writing an essay on masturbation, doing a sexy interview with Lisa "Suckdog" Carver, going through my sketchbook to find which psychotic mangled penis drawings will go into my first ever published gallery of illustrations. I wound down at some point and turned on the television to find sexy people on Six Feet Under doing sexy sex things to each other. Read selections from a couple of novels I've got going that just weren't sexy enough to hold my interest. Pulled the blankets up over me and wondered whether I should beat off yet again as a way to kill the running suicide monologue in my head, an affliction I've had to deal with on an almost daily basis for twenty years. Thinking sexy thoughts is my best distraction.

I'm heading to Victoria on Friday to see Caveh Zahedi's I Am A Sex Addict at the film festival. I'm a big fan of Caveh's work, which I'd describe as artful autobiographical exploitation; painfully confessional, he can make you laugh and wince at the same time as he lets it all hang out. Caveh is to film what Joe Matt is to comics. One of my all-time favorite films is his I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore. He takes a trip to Vegas with his elderly Iranian immigrant father and his teenage half-brother, and presses them hard to take ecstasy with him so they can have a family bonding experience. Sick stuff. I wangled a press pass so I could get out of paying eight bucks to see I Am A Sex Addict. It's the principle of the thing: I don't believe I should have to pay for anything. But it's ethical. I'm sure the film will inspire me to the point that I end up contacting Caveh when I return home. In the least I'll have a conversation with him exploring sex addiction that I can publish, but I fantasize going further and making our dialogue the subject of a short film. We'll see. And, oh yeah, I'm hoping to have sex while I'm in Victoria, there's a dynamite young woman I'm seeing there now.

I worry I'm a sex addict.

Since Jane and I split, I've taken two lovers, and there is immediate potential for more on the horizon as others have suggested interest and availability. Before we separated, I (kind of) joked to Jane, "once I walk out the door they'll be lining up around the block for me." Not exactly true, but the spirit of it is. I've had an endless chain of girlfriends for the past eighteen years, one after the other, many overlapping. I figured the longest I'd gone without female companionship was three months. A., one of my closest friends, someone who has witnessed my love life for twelve years, questioned the three month number. "Was it that long?" she asked. When we looked back upon my history, my God, it was only six weeks! Damn her and her precise memory for dates. I used to be that sharp, but my memory has gone into recession these last couple of years, battered by psychiatric drugs and marijuana.

Dames are my Achilles heel. Before I left for exile I contemplated giving myself a year off, a little sexual sobriety. I lasted two weeks. So I started to question whether this behavior of mine indicated some sort of compulsion, something I need to at least be aware of, or, if I get too carried away, curbed. When I first started seeing Jane it was during a period of juggling five girlfriends and engaging in some spontaneous group sex situations. Looking back I was going through a mania. Now? Trying to approach this responsibly so I don't go ga-ga and get out of control.

It's probably more neuroses than anything else, friends assure me that it's either not a problem, or it's something I seem to have a handle on. I actually feel weird talking about it, and I have been a nutcase when I bring it up with people because I find it embarrassing. I'm not sure I should be talking about it here, or with any of my friends. It's probably best explored with someone like Caveh: if I'm going to air my dirty laundry in public, I might as well transform it into a work of art, frame it so I'm judged more as an artist than as a human being. Artists get away with all kinds of shit that other humans don't. Maybe someone out there is aghast reading this, and is passing judgement upon me: "that degenerate!" If I exploit myself in film or literature I can expect more respect, kudos, people writing me and saying "I really relate."

Compulsion is a good name for a movie about all this. Very Godardian.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=298&subID=297feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Announcements http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=399feed@mungbeing.com (The Editors) Announcements -- Charles Thomson on the Ofili Scandal Charles Thomson blows the lid off of the Tate's "Ofili Scandal" in an EXCELLENT article in Counterpunch
[http://www.counterpunch.org/thomson01142006.html]
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=399&subID=339 Announcements -- Happy Birthdays!
Also, a sweet birthday kiss to Amber Rosin! ShhhhhhhMAKK!]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=399&subID=340 Announcements -- A Letter From Wckr Spgt
Please understand that it's not you, it's us. We are staying together as a band and we will continue to seek our own happiness but we just can't do that with you any more. We've tried to make this work but that's what it feels like it's become -- all work. Things are different now and so it's time to change with them.

We'll be all right. We're thinking about recording another album just for us, something to make us feel good. That's something that we need in our lives right now, to feel good. We're sure that you'll hear about it through our mutual friends. That is, if they're still talking to us.

And we'll make that movie that we always talked about. We'll make that movie and we'll be all right.

We're sure that you'll be all right too. There are PLENTY of bands out there who would be lucky to be in a relationship with you. And we want to remain friends with you -- if you think that might be a possibility.

We're sorry that you had to find out like this. We tried calling but the phone is always busy. If we were the jealous-type, we'd think that you were already talking to another band ;)

We saw Matthew the other day and he looked happy. We can't say that we were surprised that you weren't there but we were still kind of hoping.

And that's part of the problem, really. We keep hoping that you'll show up but you're always "too busy" or "too dead" to make even a little effort to see us. Sometimes it feels like we give, give, give and get nothing in return. We know that's not 100% true but sometimes that's just how it feels. We're sorry if that hurts your feelings. We don't want to upset you or anything. It's just that we need to face the reality of this relationship.

So, anyway, there's not a whole lot more to say. You are smart and people like you. You'll do fine.

And so will we.

Missing you already,
Wckr Spgt

*By reading this letter, you have agreed to break up with Wckr Spgt. This is a binding agreement that we may revise at any time. While we are sorry to see you go, we know that you'll find another band to love as much as we loved you. ]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=399&subID=363feed@mungbeing.com (Mark Givens | Joel Huschle) Letters to the Editor http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=386feed@mungbeing.com (The Editors) Body Paintings http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=442feed@mungbeing.com (Godfrey Blow) Magma Irremovable To her father, it was like a death.
The death of his little girl, the baby he had held in his hands as she was still wet from birth, umbilical cord freshly knotted on her tiny stomach. The death of the little girl who liked Big Bird and helped her mother bake cookies and who gravely held her little brother's hand each time he crossed the street. The little girl was no more; now she had metamorphosed, seemingly overnight, into a young woman, with budding breasts, newly curved hips, and now menstruating. He smiled bravely when his wife told him. "First period, eh? Time flies, doesn't it?"
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He cried afterwards, alone in the garage.
To her mother, it was a whole new set of responsibilities.
A joyful time, to be sure, but a responsibility, nonetheless. She showed her daughter where the sanitary napkins were, under the sink in the bathroom. She administered Midol for the cramps, a cup of tea for the talks, and a strong, gentle shoulder for the first bout of menstrual tears. Inwardly, she braced herself for the inescapable: boyfriends, birth control, late-night curfew worries.
Later, she did the dishes, smiling through the kitchen window, remembering her own adolescence and hoping her daughter's would be just as happy.

The girl exited the bathroom, after changing her pad herself. Her mother was in the kitchen, staring out the window. She could hear her father doing something in the garage. How could they act like nothing was going on? This was unbelievable! She shook her head in frustration - didn't the world revolve around her, after all? - and ran to the telephone.
"Cheryl? It's Toni. Guess what. I beat you to it!"
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=351feed@mungbeing.com (Amy Frushour Kelly) But what do we do with the body? Eyeball fingertips soaking it all in,
I can feel my way through.
I enjoy valleys more than the peaks,
Imagining how much closer to the insides.
I am much closer to the insides.

You are forensically inured.
Guts don't scare you anymore.
My guts don't scare you.

Even if you were roast chicken
I'd have a hard time poking
The crispy skin you wear.

If you can't kill it, You shouldn't eat it.

Chasing me around the yard
Fun!
Your knife is so nice.
Your knife is so nice.
I like fences,
They keep stuff in.
I hate it when the stuff comes out.

You make my tummy feel funny,
Is this love, momma?
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=534feed@mungbeing.com (Alexis O'Hara) rendering a social matriarchy through sexual manipulation http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=440feed@mungbeing.com (Patrick Turk) Going For It
It is commonly known that sumo wrestlers weigh next to nothing as they are inflatable. Weights in their feet keep them planted on the ground. Technical mishaps do happen. Various reputable sources have well documented cases detailing sumo wrestlers floating away. Specks in the sky distant never to be retrieved. The reason being that the weights could have proven defective. A more popular explanation is that the weights may not have even been worn. Often it is because sometimes the sumo wrestlers are taken for walks suspended in the air by a long string. If the small child loses their grip of the string secured to the sumo wrestler then away he goes! Up, up, up the sumo wrestler goes seemingly shrinking to the observing passerby whilst child cries, already missing their large friend.

Other times the sumo wrestler gets pierced by something sharp instantaneously exploding with a bang! Another sports hero gone to be kept alive only through hollowed out public statues and the steamy memories of the first kiss lottery winners who now perch themselves atop mountains. Winners who never did have another kiss as good as the first. The force of disappointment moved them further away from large crowds. Only the energies of Eros surround them along with the bulbous plants that sprouted in the dense undergrowth never wilting.

When a sumo wrestler gets old he becomes wrinkled and stringy. The sumo wrestler can no longer wrestle. Retirement is not a sweet affair. An early death is preferred. Big noodle factories usually buy the old wrestlers from their ruthlessly business minded owners. Through a mysterious process the sumo wrestlers are converted into noodles, dried, then packaged with amazing flair. These noodles come in five different flavours- beef, chicken, shrimp, vegetable, and original sumo. With a tangy sauce packet, a great delicacy is to be had for only minor trinkets of loose pocket money. Food itself has many waves of pleasure through odour, texture, flavour, and consistency. The experience of a well-prepared meal can set one off with various charges of energy causing knees to knock rapidly together in successive motions with much delight.

These noodles serve other purposes as well. In certain underground bondage videos, the submissive is chained to a soft pink wall. Someone dressed as a cowboy holds wet, retired sumo wrestler noodles firmly in hand giving out forty forceful lashes. The first ten lashes give a shock of newness. The next ten are painful. Lashes twenty-one through thirty rapidiate salivation. The last ten lose track of time because of slave's desire for those burning feelings to never end. The video is usually quite grainy, just distinct enough to detect what is transpiring and to make out the glazed look in the submissive's eyes.

If one sends off 100 proofs of purchase to the retired sumo wrestler noodle company they can get a special ring. The noodles boiled in a pot respond to signals from the ring like a charmer to a snake slowly rising out of its basket. The noodles wrap themselves around the ring wielder's torso tighter and tighter moving constantly and slowly. Wrap wrap humming vibration stiffening in middle, soft on outside. Flesh-like yet controlling all waves of pure ecstacy. Yes, yes. Slithery slidy locking into all parts. Ring wielder looking up seeing only fuzzy whiteness and gasping. The noodles push towards the bedroom to continue for hours unending as the curtain flutters from an open window. Oh, noodle noodle noodle noodle noodle noodle noodle noodle noodle noodle I love you noodle noodle noodle noodle noodle I do never end noodle never become brittle noodle noodle noodle ohh noodle noodle noodle mmm noodle.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=527feed@mungbeing.com (Robert Dayton) Model Matrix 10 (Detail) http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=434feed@mungbeing.com (Ian Pyper) Where Can I Find the Red Road? http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=525feed@mungbeing.com (Krista S. Givens) I Sing The Body Morphemic Body is not one of those words with an elaborate, telling etymology. The dictionary I have on hand says merely "from Old English bodig, of unknown origin." A gibbet of language, mute as a carcass.

The article in the body is suggestive; we think of it as unified. And, significantly, spatially contiguous. What leaves our body instantly ceases to belong to it*, while those items -- hair, nails -- that are attached to the rest, but which our will cannot affect, continue to be. But suppose there were some object, disconnected from the rest of you, the movements of which you could control just as you do your hand's. Telekinesis, or part of the body?

*Though perhaps there are exceptions here - one would react differently to a severed limb or a removed organ than to one's bodily waste. And what of transplants? Whose kidney is this?

Somebody, anybody, everybody -- we use these interchangeably with someone, anyone, everyone, in both cases referring to persons, not merely their bodies. Yet somemind, anymind, everymind (or ...soul) are not words at all. If the mind is a substance, the body is among its accidents.

(But hear the corpse in "corporate," the meat in "incarnation.")

If the body is a substance, the voice is among its accidents. On The Young Moderns' only single the "Body Won't Obey." On Mary Margaret O'Hara's album Miss America, the "Body's In Trouble." In each case, the female vocal is exemplary of the style often adopted by, among others, Sinead O'Connor, Kristin Hersh, Dolores O'Riordan, and (sometimes) Polly Jean Harvey. Much soul singing -- note the opposed term -- mimes resilience under stress of one or another kind; this more recent manner suggests that some system or connection, psychic as much as bodily, has failed, despite the technical control required to exemplify this failure. What was it about the 1980s that give this way of presenting the female voice such currency?

When do men sing about the body? The first example that comes to mind is The Village People, "Macho Man": "body (body)/wanna feel/my body (body)/such a thrill/my body...." The relation seems less troubled, though perhaps this is an unrepresentative case.

What body and mind have in common is that they are each the central site of transformation for a portion of our personal economies. Loci from which we gather material, partly for self-sustaining ends, though also in the course of producing work and -- again -- waste, though the nature of the waste is less evident in the case of the mind. And then there is interstate commerce, governed by an intricate, obscure body of law.

There are related usages -- body of work, of knowledge, of evidence -- which, if metaphors, are dead ones. All suggest the presence some unifying principle among the constituent elements, though this is more often wished for than found.

At the end of how many words (and over how many centuries) has the morpheme ig uncurled into our y?]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=502feed@mungbeing.com (Franklin Bruno) Nude with Legs Elevated http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=499feed@mungbeing.com (Michael O'Briant) Rain http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=506feed@mungbeing.com (Kim Richardson) Haiku Ruby her head: funny, ears: pointy
legs: an afterthought]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=491feed@mungbeing.com (Joel Huschle) The Two Things You Never Want to Hear "I'm well acquainted with black comedy. It's a lifestyle choice."
--David "Starchy" Grant
Maybe it's a bit gauche of me to quote myself in this manner. That's fine. This story involves far more of the sinister than it does the adroit.

Last Friday night, thanks to the same headaches I've been having for two months now, my head was in a great deal of pain. Correction: my head was pain, or so it seemed. This pain was not just an annoyance, as pain can so often be; this pain was, at points, paralyzing. After my girlfriend got home from work and we determined that things weren't getting any better, she took me down to the hospital.

Friday night is never pleasant in an emergency room, less so still when you're there because of an excruciating headache which is exacerbated both by loud hospital noises and bright hospital lights. Nonetheless, we went there, and we sat there, and we waited. For six hours.

At last I was checked in, painkillers were administered, blood was drawn, and an as-yet unending and increasingly repetitive series of interviews and exams commenced. When the first of two CT scans was taken at around five thirty in the morning, I managed to catch my first few badly needed winks. Nodding off when you're strapped into a giant, ominous, whirring and clanking machine proved easier than one might think.

Then it was time for the spinal taps. That's right, there's an 's' at the end there. The first two didn't work, you see; poking around someone's spine with a big needle is apparently still an inexact science. This is pretty much exactly what the human nervous system is wired up to prevent, and here I was doing it voluntarily. For anyone who might be unfamiliar with the concept, it's when a doctor jams a big needle into your spine. By the time the third attempt hit spinal-column paydirt, the morphine barely did anything to help. This is the only time in my adult life I can remember really crying, gushing, wailing, in tears from pure physical pain. At least they let me sleep while waiting for the results.

We'll pause for a moment here while I ask you to ask yourself: What are the two things you never want to hear from a doctor? The things that, if you're anything like me, you never even imagine hearing but in moments of stupid dark fantasy, fuel for the pointless masochistic oh-thank-fuck-it's-not-real method acting we humans sometimes do to give our emotional faculties a no-pain-no-gain workout. Things you can't help but admit you could conceivably hear someday, but no-ha-ha-not-me-really-come-on-now. You can probably think of more than two, but if pressed to keep it down to that number you shouldn't have any trouble choosing, and I'm willing to bet you'll choose no differently than I would. Name them, and remember them, and that's enough of that, moving on now:

Talk about a rude awakening. The attending doctor and his student returned to my curtained-off gurney during one of the few moments when my girlfriend was conspicuously absent, and the looks on their faces told me straight off a number of things I didn't want to know. The attending, a soft-spoken white-haired man, did the talking.

"David," he said carefully, "have you ever been tested for HIV?"

O holy tearful fuck, no. No. NO.

Panicked, pained, and groggy, I explained all the reasons I had not to be worried about that since my last test. Intellectually, I knew I had no significant reasons to think I could have been infected, but I knew I was speaking defensively, and when a doctor asks you a question like that in a tone like that--

O sweet merciful hilarious life, don't let me be this joke!

Preliminary results from tests on my cerebrospinal fluid showed that I had cryptococcus, in lay terms a fungal form of meningitis. This fit very nicely with all of my symptoms, and had a bright side in that I could be cured of it in a matter of days. The darker side was that a human being can't normally get such an infection. As it was explained to me, there were only two major exceptions to the rule, those being when said human had one of two other things going on:

1. HIV

2. Cancer

I can't tell you how this felt. I'm not that good of a writer. Nobody has ever been that good of a writer.

My girlfriend and I took some time to ourselves before I was admitted as an inpatient. She's nothing but a wonderful lover and an amazing person. That's all you need to know about that.

It was another twenty-four hours before I found out that follow-up blood work counter-indicated cryptococcus. It wasn't until Monday afternoon that the results of an HIV test came back, decidedly negative. On Tuesday, a few hours before I was released, it was confirmed that the original test results had been nothing more than a mistake.

I still don't know what's wrong with my head, and it could be some time yet before I find out for sure. In the meantime, I can tell you two things it isn't. For the time being, I'm pretty happy with that.

For those who truly like their humor black, no sugar, this might be a perfect story. I'll let you decide for yourselves once I tell you the punchline. After all, I never mentioned the name of that soft-spoken, white haired doctor who came to me with all that news unfit to print.

His name, in case you were wondering, is Doctor Graves.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=486feed@mungbeing.com (David "Starchy" Grant) Jefferson County Confidential http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=519feed@mungbeing.com (Jeffrey Scott Holland) Beat Your Meat Manifesto "Don't knock masturbation, it's sex with someone I love." - Woody Allen
Pornography is more accessible now than it has ever been: a multi-billion dollar industry built upon the masturbatory indulgences of millions of people. It's the topic of dinner conversations, sitcoms (in which hilarity ensues!); porn stars like Ron Jeremy are widely recognized in Middle America, it is no longer scandalous to find a stack of Hustler magazines in Dad's underwear drawer. It seems that for everyone (save the Christian Right and some old-fashioned feministas in North America) the viewing of porn is seen as normal rather than a vice so vile it needs to be hidden in the darker corners of our persons. So why, in this climate, has masturbation not caught up in terms of acceptance, why does it still generate nervous titters and scornful derision?

If you were to ask me how often I have sex each week, I'd probably answer "at least ten times, often more." The reply to this might be, "wow, how does your partner keep up?" or "your partner must be a real nympho." Sometimes I've been in a fortunate enough situation to enjoy sex with a lover on a daily basis, but nobody, not even me, can sustain this indefinitely. You know what? I use the word sex as a synonym for masturbation. While I agree with Woody Allen's quote above, my views on masturbation see me shortening that phrase: "don't knock masturbation, it's sex." Period.

I've been informally polling people the past few years, ever since I stopped making the distinction between the varieties of sexual experience. I've discovered that most people use the word sex as a descriptor for intercourse, and intercourse only. "I just had sex." To you this means a penis was inserted into a vagina (or, if you're a gay man, a penis busting an ass). Blowjobs, cunnilingus, finger-banging somehow don't qualify as sex, they have to be categorized separately in part of some kind of weird, culturally-defined sexual hierarchy. Masturbation is the lowest form, of course, because the general attitude is that it is the act of a pathetic loser, a person who can't find sexual intimacy with another. All of the euphemisms of masturbation are used in the pejorative: we derisively sneer at the "wanker," the Van Halen wannabe who goes off on ten-minute guitar solos, and bitch out the "jerk-off" who stole our favorite parking spot. These archaic attitudes about masturbation serve to reinforce the taboos and guilt-ridden shame that surround physical self-love. If one is to walk in on the act of another masturbating, it is embarrassing for the peter-beater, and a white Christian shock, or an oh so hilarious story to tell, for the person who catches them. Yet walking in on two people engaged in a sex act will not bring upon the same feelings, as sex with another is seen as perfectly normal. As for the higher spots in the hierarchy, they are all covered by the well-known baseball metaphor, in which, of course, "going all the way," having intercourse, is heralded as scoring a home run. You're not actually having sex until you slide into home.

My sex drive operates quite high, has for years with very few wanes. I beat off, diddle myself, spank the monkey; I do this, well, a lot. It's sex with someone I love now, sure, but I can't say I've always loved myself. Did it, anyway. It's probable the turning point for me was when I started seeing masturbation as a deep act of self-love rather than just a way to quickly get my rocks off. Spending more time with my body, learning the myriad ways to experience pleasure, ritualizing it, drawing it out, trying novel techniques: masturbation has helped make me a better person, stronger within myself, and has healed infected, gaping wounds that were slicing up my ego-identity.


This is all fine and well, but for me the primary reason masturbation ranks as an equal lexical partner to intercourse, oral and all the rest when I say "I had sex," is that a good wank is just as effective as any of these other methods at uncoiling the electric whip that lashes my spine when I throw the entirety of my being into paroxysms of orgonic ecstasy. Yep: some of the most mind-blowing sex I've had has been with myself. I'm actually a better partner for myself than most partners I've had. And well I should be. I once read somewhere "we're all responsible for our own orgasms." That was revelatory for me, and I wonder if everyone understands what that truly means. You should know your body better than anyone else, you should be able to take the time to find the keys that unlock all your sexual secrets. When I have an orgasm with a partner I often say "thank you," but this thank you is not me saying "thank you for giving me an orgasm," a feat no other human has done for me, but rather "thank you for helping me achieve orgasm in a most pleasurable way, for being an intimate lover bearing witness to this most sacred of acts."

Go ahead, tell me to go fuck myself, call me a self-spankazoidal jism archer, I will not find these terms insulting. Partner or not, there is no shame in having sex with someone I love. To wit, I go boldly forth and across this land sing the praises of the raptures of Onan.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=533feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Making It Work http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=430feed@mungbeing.com (Mark DeLong) broken leg and period http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=535feed@mungbeing.com (David Ostrowski) A little dip into the Invasion of Sense
She thought quite a lot in some trying days that had passed because you see she feared that she might just not rest until she had figured it all out. Her thoughts weaved vibrations about some things that were real to her and some that were not. All the things she might miss if she knew what they were. Blindly sifting through headspace and misguided delicacy without knowing not to step on her own toes. Missing the painfully obvious queues to feel it when she did. Nor did she realize that her expectations were crippling and how that contributed to the making of her very own personal washing machine in the mind. So prone was it to stick on the spin cycle, whirling around thoughts that love was something worth investing in but came at unmentionably high costs.

She was starting to sense that this dance was a twist of need that would no longer be ignored. Feelings were emerging that mirrored her thoughts and the whole lot seemed to betray her at every turn. She could go no further into this confusing destruction of false foundation without sensing the loss of it. Sure, it's shaky and unsure but it is all there is. How do you pull away from thought and sink into feeling when it can be so paralysing to do so?

How do you come to accept that the basis of your breath is steeped in shame and always looking for land mines that you've schemed up but forgot where you've laid them? The loosening of control spills all kinds of frights that bleed their illusion into our waking sleep. The grip becomes so very hard to capture in this manifest.
link
A reference point without feeling of what it is to be attached and rooted is smeared in fear and geared to inspire spiritual crisis in the dawning of new mornings honour. May we humbly discover while on our knees, our heavens Sheppard's guidance. When we are at the point of screaming our need into the night so that it may all come undone.

Imagine having invisible tools before you that have your vibration all wrapped up in them but were only invisible to you. For a moment if you will, feel the feeling that might become you. Imagine learning that they actually were there but it would take some effort on your part to perceive them. And you might just not make it if you don't ask for help. But no matter, you're really rather weary by this time anyway so it comes a little easier than it has in the past.

If that doesn't light a fire under ones ass to reach for the strength to turn this current around, she was not really sure what else could.

How many definitions mesh at these melting points in search of dreams? Where hope must hold will's hand in the unfolding of the day. Where beliefs are challenged in those that are starving. Perhaps the faith that love resides deeply within us is the meeting place to the source of creation and loves true vibration. When it spirals down and tugs on our coat tails while blowing wind in directions internal. Along with the supporting backdrop of nature we are silently encouraged to realign our systems in breaking them down if that is what it takes.

She sensed a shade of green that mirrored ignorance and spoke of how consistently it missed the hidden potential in maladjusted development. How do you change the shades of your color or the nature of a feeling? How can you break through the barriers that have kept you safe in interest of perceiving new possibilities without ever having had to reach to feel? There is no victim here, just an emerging light warrior whose new house is protected by the healing presence of emerald breath. Who knows that it's most ok when tears are allowed to flow.

She started to understand this path had been lovingly laid offering a measure of blessings that were given life in the form of wounds. Because one idea of hope led to another then coupled with scenes that lent their efforts to confirmation of comfort and transformation. The stride a little lighter knowing that a feeling was coming that would open the only one door, that her heart would ever need to feel herself walking through. Her place of ancient everything, her tool slash work shop if you will. Before this sensation, there is rest honored in the song. Then have you a place where a gurl can lay her head for awhile?

Lighthouses appeared that illuminated in such simple lovely ways, the natural web of connection to self and the divine. An intrinsic right to lose one self in order to find ones self reveals these truths. So she questions not, any step that has come. There is the grace that one can learn while dodging land mines and trying to make it look like you're doing it with ballet slippers on. In the short of the long, may you find true sensation in your every breath. May it call out to reach the inside.

Like majestic mountains that had been obscured by cloud, love has always been in this sacred space of heart. Yet in the interests of ever moving motion, it has been mystically covered up by mist. A timeless friend revealed that simply states it exquisite intent..
"Welcome, I've been waiting for you" ]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=427feed@mungbeing.com (Heidi Morgan) Nudes http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=400feed@mungbeing.com (Peter Klint) Nudes -- Lust http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=400&subID=353feed@mungbeing.com (Peter Klint) -- The Rules Of Attraction http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=401&subID=354feed@mungbeing.com (Peter Klint) -- Seal's Corner I http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=402&subID=355feed@mungbeing.com (Peter Klint) -- Seal's Corner II http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=403&subID=356feed@mungbeing.com (Peter Klint) Fuck Monster http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=428feed@mungbeing.com (Mun Mun Mittelbach) Death as Design Massive Change exhibit thrown in for good measure.

But I've been coaxed back on this crisp early October day. Not by the extensive 40 million dollar renovation currently underway, updating almost a third of the facility, but by a special show - in fact the first fully separate exhibition the OSC has put on outside of the normal collection. It's been impossible to ignore the provocative advertising campaign for it, the one featuring models showing lots of skin. And bone. People not exactly drop dead gorgeous. Just dead.

The occasion is Body Worlds 2, a freakish display of real human bodies marketed sometimes as health education, sometimes as art, sometimes both. Its arrival has struck a nerve in Toronto. The parking lot is filled almost to the back row and, as I walk inside, the entire centre seems infused with a sense of vitality and energy. There are visitors of all ages wandering about, from little children to octogenarians, and baby strollers everywhere. Like a public hanging, the show's brought out the townspeople.

Body Worlds is the creation of the iconoclast anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens, a man who would bear a remarkable resemblance to Raiders of the Lost Arc's Major Toht if only the Major exchanged his black leather coat for Bavarian lederhosen. He's an odd duck and proud of it, never hiding the fact he was once imprisoned for his political views in East Germany, that he adopted the surname of his first wife (he was born Gunther Gerhard Liebchen), or that we wasn't really cut out for a conventional medical career.
Working as a research assistant, he grew curious as to why plastics were used to encase rather than impregnate specimens. In 1977, he developed a technique he called plastination, a process that replaces normal body fluids with polymer plastics, rubberizing and stabilizing soft tissues. He's been playing with plastination ever since, so much so that his life and his work are almost inseparable. He even met his second wife, Angelina Whalley, at a dissection class.

The plastination process transforms human corpses - even after embalming squishy, smelly things -- into clean and odorless plastinates strong enough to be displayed openly without supports. The bodies are first prepared conventionally with formaldehyde to halt decomposition, vacuum infiltrated with plastic polymers, then dissected and posed. Corpses can then be placed in virtually any position imaginable before the plastic is cured, after which the specimen is permanently fixed.

I pay $25 for my adult ticket and go in. A long concrete walkway has been transformed into an exhibit hall by the application of great swaths of black fabric. The mood is hushed, yet charged with anticipation. Body Worlds starts conventionally enough. At first, it shows only bony specimens, hands and feet in halogen-lit Lucite cases. Even the hanging human skeleton, real, could be a plastic model. But as I advance through the exhibit, the displays become increasingly more daring. One holds a human arm with the muscles and ligaments of the shoulder and chest still attached.
I meet the first full body corpse I've encountered outside of a funeral. He's standing with his right hand extended, a grin on his skinless face, like a stoned zombie. He seems genuinely happy to be the Body Worlds ambassador. I sniff carefully. There is no trace of chemical odor about him. He also has no genitals. He seems not so much human as a human-ish sculpture; and like one, he is titled ('The Hand Shake') and signed by von Hagens. No information about the man he once was is offered, not even a date of birth.

I'm surprised to see a plastinate is being removed. Titled 'The Ponderer', it is posed like a bored executive in a meeting, sitting with a leg crossed and a wistful, faraway look. Even from where I am standing, I can see the incredible dissection work that has been done on him. As I watch, he's lifted by a pair of furniture mover types who aren't wearing gloves, supervised by a woman. They place him on a Styrofoam box propped on the seat of a wheelchair and tape him into place. He's steered away. Abduction, I wonder? But it turns out just to be a scheduled TV appearance.

The North American exhibit has been marketed as a scientific presentation making it less controversial than in Europe where Body Worlds was mainly billed as art. While some displays are clinical, the artistic element runs deep. The majority of the corpses are presented in sporting poses -- skiing, skateboarding, soccer, parallel rings, yoga, even couples figure skating. But there's almost always a twist in the arrangements: the ski jumper is sawn in half; the skateboarder is inverted on one hand, forever defying gravity; and the figures in 'Elegance on Ice' are depicted in the classic skating move, a death spiral.

Most of the bodies are men. This predominance is not accidental; the show only began increasing the number of female plastinates after a 2002 exhibit in London. Before this, von Hagens had not wanted Body Worlds to be accused of enabling voyeurism, since human bodies cannot help but be anatomically correct. He's grown more comfortable since. According to one newspaper article last year he even considered showing a plastinated couple having sex.

I have no idea how my sexual fantasies might have been shaped if the first naked woman I'd ever seen was a plastinate, but there was a ten year old kid standing beside me that's going to find out. We're both gawking at Yoga girl, bent over in a back handstand, her sex exposed for the world. Her upturned, skinless breasts look like rubberized fat. "Kind of looks like Celine Dion, huh?" I say to him. He runs back to the safety of his school group.

You might have yawned through high school biology, but you can't go to sleep in this exhibit (or go to the bathroom, a common complaint). These are not cheap, plastic organs from some scientific supply house or rotting leftovers from the local butcher shop. These exhibits could have been your grandma Edna or cousin Frank. Or even you, if, like Stephanie Chapu of Toronto, you are so moved by the show that you fill out the Request for Plastination paperwork and receive approval by the Heidelberg-based Institute for Plastination (IFP). Just don't hold your breath for immortalization. First you'll have to die -- which could take a while if, like Stephanie, you're only 30 years old - and you'll have to be lucky. There are over 6300 folks signed up ahead of you.

I find a section on reproduction, showing human embryonic development from 1 to 8 weeks, older babies, and a woman who died in her fifth month of pregnancy. She's striking. Her expression seems to convey sad surprise, as though she didn't see coming whatever did her in. She has full lips and high cheekbones. Perhaps she was high, too: her lungs show dark evidence that she hadn't stopped smoking. I stare at her and her unborn baby a long time, thinking about how they have touched the lives of millions of people. Body. That they're part of the exhibit makes their deaths seem less tragic to me.

But it's von Hagens' creative works that shows the true versatility of the plastination process and a glimpse into his odd mind. For sheer size, the inclusion of a plastinated camel is impressive, the head and neck have been sliced into three separate poses and the unique GI tract laid bare. But the animal is nothing compared to 'The Exploded Body', with parts expanded in 3-D space and held in place by fishing line; the 'Drawer Man', opening his chest like a medicine cabinet, while other sections of his anatomy protrude like a chest of drawers; or the 'X-Lady', a nightmarish dissection that defies simple explanation. These works are so strange that it has led some critics to argue that perhaps a moral line has been crossed.

Dr. von Hagens is publicly adamant that his more interpretive works are meant to share insights into human anatomy, not to make art. Yet his wife, who serves as IFP's managing director and designs the traveling exhibitions, is a self-described plastination artist. His intention is sometimes clearly to provoke. The more spectacular poses stoke controversy, pushing up profits while testing the boundaries of dignity and taste. I find some of the displays self serving, mainly advertising the plastination process itself, patented and used by over 400 institutions worldwide. Need a human sawed into sagittal slices, reduced to red-dyed blood vessels, or turned inside out? Just contact the IFP and order one. Or, for the DIY types, another von Hagens company, BIODUR, will sell you a full line of polymer products and equipment.

Whatever the original motivation for developing the technique, plastination has transformed Dr. von Hagens into a multi-millionaire businessman and a skillful marketer. He's not above employing shock tactics to garner attention. Or bending the truth. The University of Heidelberg recently fined him for implying he was a professor of that institution, a title they had not conferred, and to formally distance themselves from the man and his shows. (According to his website, he holds a medical degree from the University of Lubeck, and a visiting professorship from the New York University College of Dentistry.) And the pregnant woman I found so haunting was once dragged onto a city bus and toured about as a media stunt. Even more controversial is that the baby in her belly may not actually be hers. Von Hagens freely admits to taking artistic license in the preparation of his corpses, swapping organs and tissues between bodies as he deems necessary, justifying this by noting organ exchanges are also done for the living.

Today over 250 employees work at Von Hagens Dalian Plastination, Ltd., a Chinese factory churning out new plastinates, which may require 1000-1500 hours per full body. With the first two exhibits booked solid, he's under pressure to produce new exhibits before the competition moves in. The phenomenal success of Body Worlds has resulted in copycat shows including "Body Exploration", "Body Exhibition", "BODIES...The Exhibition", and "The Universe Within", the last making at least a small attempt to distinguish itself name-wise. Unfortunately, it was also the show that last year made headlines in San Francisco when the bodies began to ooze fluids. Organizers also could not immediately provide authorities that proof of proper consent for plastination had been obtained. Dr. von Hagens has also been challenged over the legitimacy of some of his early donors, although in each case he has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Because of the relatively easy procurement of bodies, competitors mainly use China-sourced bodies. Labor costs also make China attractive for body preparation. Wary of encroachment, von Hagens sues the competition aggressively. But because the plastination process itself is difficult to protect intellectually his lawsuits are often based on artistic copyright - that is, the signature dissections and poses. The necroexhibition industry apparently suffers the same problems as Louis Vuitton, Rolex, and Disney: the rampant proliferation of Chinese knock offs. The Universe Within's oozing difficulties was believed to have resulted from substandard plastination.

I spend almost as much time watching the live people at the exhibit. It's ironic that it took dead bodies to breathe so much life back into the Ontario Science Centre. But death is the ultimate fetish. The merest whiff of it can grind freeway traffic to a halt, backing up cars for kilometers. It entertained us for five seasons of Six Feet Under. And the media scours the globe for it, hot on the trail of wars, atrocities, starvation, or the latest deadly virus. It's little wonder that von Hagens and his friends have brought over 260,000 people into the OSC, easily besting the 150,000 targeted, and there's still a month to go. It's been a gold rush of ticket sales, merchandising, and ancillary events, like a lecture series that brought von Hagens together with local experts in "lively, unscripted and even controversial conversations" to talk about The Ethics of Exhibiting Human Remains, The Anatomical Body: Art or Science?, and The Trafficking of Dead Bodies - the last presumably not a 'how to' discussion. The result has been to shatter OSC attendance figures that have gone unchallenged for generations. Yet there is still ample room for growth: the Toronto figures are low compared to other cities. In 2003, Stuttgart pushed 106,000 visitors through the display in only eight days while a six month run in Pusan garnered 1.1 million viewers.

I see no evidence of outrage in the people milling about me. Mainly, what I see in the faces about me is fascination -- gaping mouths and twisted heads gawking in and around all the bodies. I see children's hands being slapped away lest they actually touch the corpses, which are not cordoned off in any way. Teenagers are pointing and snickering, bragging about the blackness of their own lungs. And the elderly look about wistfully, as though seeing their own bodies in a few years time.

Why has the show produced so little controversy in North America? Does it just take more to shock us given our steady diets of carnage in movies, television, and video games? Or is it that no sensationalist antics have been necessary here to draw the crowds, that the show's reputation and is sufficient draw? Or that the media here has not dogged von Hagens as they did in Germany and Poland, where they grilled him about his father's Nazi activities and his business practices? Von Hagens' spin on it the subdued response is that North Americans are simply more health conscious.

While Body Worlds does show off the incredible mechanism that is our body, it also manages to dehumanize it, as though the infusion of silicone drives out any organic connection to the person it once contained. Once, on a road trip, I happened upon an accident whereby a truck had driven over a young boy's head, squishing out brains like pus from a zit. My revulsion and sense of tragedy were palpable, affecting me for days. But I felt nothing of the sort in Body Worlds. The plastinates are clever, but hollow: death as an exercise in industrial design. By the end of the exhibit they all seem artificial to me, no more representative of living flesh and blood than wax figurines.

In the end, despite the educational aspect, I see the exhibit mainly as a business venture. Although over 17 million people have seen the show, continuing interest is almost guaranteed. Detailed understanding of the human body remains unknown to those outside of medical science, and draws our interest. But the greatest lure is the mystery of death itself. Despite our technological and social progress, we are as ignorant today about death as we were a thousand years ago. I leave hoping that Body Worlds and its ilk does not desensitize viewers to physical death or, in the process, take the beauty of life for granted.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=513feed@mungbeing.com (Andrew Hessel) Toys http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=515feed@mungbeing.com (Thomas Hangelbroek) Toys -- Where Are My Arms Baby 1 wooden beads, pipe cleaners, 2005/6]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=515&subID=364feed@mungbeing.com (Thomas Hangelbroek) Toys -- Where Are My Arms Baby 2 wooden beads, pipe cleaners, 2005/6]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=515&subID=365feed@mungbeing.com (Thomas Hangelbroek) Toys -- The Night Their Best Just Wasn't Enough wooden beads, pipe cleaners, 2005/6]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=515&subID=366feed@mungbeing.com (Thomas Hangelbroek) -- It Just Wasn't Their Night wooden beads, pipe cleaners, 2005/6]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=517&subID=367feed@mungbeing.com (Thomas Hangelbroek) -- Buteogallus meridionalis wooden beads, pipe cleaners, 2005/6]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=518&subID=368feed@mungbeing.com (Thomas Hangelbroek) Jane's Body Drawing http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=526feed@mungbeing.com (Jane Martin) Sketchbook Drawings http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=528feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Sketchbook Drawings -- common penis mushroom http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=528&subID=379feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Sketchbook Drawings -- fungus and penises http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=528&subID=380feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Sketchbook Drawings -- penis cluster parfait with nuts http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=528&subID=381feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) -- adam and eve gonna fuck first time getting in the mood http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=529&subID=382feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) -- herpes + pinkeye + bugs http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=529&subID=383feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) -- this is my angst on drugs http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=529&subID=384feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) -- a woman not my wife http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=530&subID=385feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) -- new pussy http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=530&subID=386feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) -- Putrid http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=532&subID=390feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) -- king and pp king http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=532&subID=391feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) -- Unified Field Theory For Real http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=531&subID=387feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Music http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=496 Music -- You're Not Gonna Eat My Spine
For this issue, Steve has recorded this song and we are pleased to be able to present it here: link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=496&subID=325feed@mungbeing.com (Steve Folta) Music -- Sexual Warfare
Download: link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=496&subID=327feed@mungbeing.com (Cash Nexus) Music -- National Beard Championship

Download: link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=496&subID=329feed@mungbeing.com (Spacemummy) Music -- Miriam's Toes No. 3 Kitchen Cynics, poet Alan Davidson here stuns MungBeing with Number Three in the "Miriam's Toes" saga (the other two appearing on Seasoning from last year.)
His latest release "Distant Voices, Distant Songs" is a collection of "love songs to the people of Aberdeen". The Kitchen Cynics are one of the many experimental bands appearing at Terrastock 6, in Providence, Rhode Island on April 21st, 22nd and 23rd, 2006.


Download: link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=496&subID=358feed@mungbeing.com (Kitchen Cynics) Easter
My husband came back. He said something about her wearing only underwear, big panties, nothing fancy, and that she had lived in the field for three days. He said she was nothing to look at really. In fact she looked like a dog, dog-ugly. He asked if I would give her a sweatshirt, some pants. I went to the laundry room, picked out the pick ones I hated, the color of peonies. Later I saw her at a distance. They had her handcuffed. They were taking her down the mountain. It was starting to rain. She had her head down, the way Jesus had his head hung, ready for the crucifixion; she was that scrawny. I put my body in her body. She was wearing my clothes. My husband told me she kept telling the cops that she was a mother, that no mother should be treated with handcuffs, that she was no danger. The cop said she was covered with bruises, that her husband her beaten her and left her on the highway, that she wanted to die in the field where she first met him, her lover. The cop said she was on drugs and loony. He said she'd probably go back to her husband. That they always do. These strays, these losers.

That was ten years ago, but I still think of her. This woman, not the only inconsolable stray I've found on my rural road, in this paradise called Napa, this manna of land fluted by canyons, sharpened by cliffs. Wappo territory where wild irises bloom their white flags from the portholes of meadows. There's been others. Other women. The woman with purple welts around her neck, scourged neck of the black and blue, weeping near her stalled U-Haul and the oversized drunken tattoo of a man. Or the woman whose husband drove his black sedan behind her as she walked the dotted line, the mean bumper of his souped up car butting up against her like a bull. But it was she, the woman discovered on Easter who remains in the center of me like the blue throat of the owl in the center of moonlight. She the vixen's red breath coming out of the garden and into the pitch. She emerging from the earth-bed like Persephone released from Hades, but returning to Hades. She, the matted camellia, the numbed apostrophe of the killdeer stirred from the cinders. Who is she, whose handiwork? Whose heat did she trigger? What ownership? Who was she, that threadbare girl of skin and ribs, feeling invisible, that field witch? Did anyone ask her; What are you feeling, do you feel anything as they cuffed her barefeet, stuffed her in back of that cop car? Was she bound and flogged before he, her lover, her spouse, tossed her out like rotten trash? Is there any way to explain her naked body? Her naked fingers? Her fallen legs collapsing under her like unplayed cards?

I think of her, of all the women I have found in my country, their shadows writhe within me. I who have stayed silent. They with their loosened hair, stained with soil and blood, drugged eyes glazed forever on the black chart of amnesia. There have been many in these hills, this valley. Wild, hard women. Endangered sisters. Their heaped colors suddenly gone ashen like the cloudiness that forms over winter blacktop. They who scratch themselves, who urinate, who stay in unspeakable loneliness because their feminine power has been routed backward like miles of barbwire. They are homeless cursed women, naughty women, the words stolen out of their teeth like bread. Those who would rather choke than be vulgar.

How can I wrap my house in sleep thinking of them, thinking of She making a fire of wet wood, telling stories to herself, singing lullabies, nursing the tragedy of her sex. I pace the floor thinking of her. I poke my spade into the dry loam and think of her. I find her everywhere. I have learned her by heart. I have worn her close to my body. For she is my body. She is the foundling of the woods, the one slip of tongue, the liquid mist that burns off the highway as the new day forms.

I want to know who touched the match to her flesh, who left her blanketless in the frost as I stoked and blazed my stove. I know she was there in the twilight and thorns. I feel her mouth on mine like a lump of bitter jelly all those times alcohol was fire on my breath. The times I starved myself with pills in my pocket, wanting love, wanting the brisk taste of airports and ferries, I've been her. The times I wanted the impermissible. I've been her. Discontent as a cormorant that pokes around the corpses of roses, wanting to be fractured, exiled under the floss of many petals, I've been her. Wanting to be seduced by that floral nard. Me, in the snowstorm of unimaginable longing while the hangman's noose rose inside my chest, taunting, taunting. I too tried on death too many times. I who wore my own bruises like badges around my jaw. I of steely posture.

Why?

I lowered myself in the chaparral, afraid, my breasts full of milk, my hair dishelved. I thought I could stand betrayal, that I could spill myself like purple vetch, like legend down the lush gametrails into drink. What soothed me? Sometimes mint in the mouth, sometimes the pearl-gray mist. I wanted to be like my ancestors. I wanted to be strong as shattered rock, as basalt mortars. I didn't think it right that a woman go off like a kettle full boil. But I was proud and half-blind. I was a stuttering tadpole. A spectacle. An odd empty thing.

I was a master of nothing. I wrestled with the serpent inside me, the female totem of melancholy. Me with my teacups and miniature cakes. I sucked in my midnights, my howls and my whelps. Why? How many dead girls like me smelled of old lunatic lies?

My sentence was mine: my well-piped breeding, my pilgrim dreams. Guardian of chandeliers, when my heart was always squawking like an interior swan. Be damned the well-scrubbed house, the family snapshots. Be damned the flowers of Hell, the ostracized penance, the lowermost regions, Lethe's spell where Eurydice wastes away with Persephone. Be damned if the dark snake of Eden flew out of my mouth. I want the Easter woman at my table, I want her story. I want to take her groggy hand, lead her away from the fettered ring, the life of sacrifice, of thick-scented curses. My tongue dips into the chewed meat of thistled honey when I say this. Mothering is the dilation of feathers. Forget the flower-pressed face concealing its failures, bleeding its kindness like a parasite. Inside our smile is the knife-grind, the winged lion. What abscesses in our flesh-- not our humiliation, nor our quarrel, but our rising.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=524feed@mungbeing.com (Leonore Wilson) Hernia http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=498feed@mungbeing.com (Gus Fink) Brad's Civil War Haiku he dismisses the soldier
war sex is rule free

link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=490feed@mungbeing.com (Brad) The Whisper Funny thing is, stretching skin doesn't hurt that much, starting out, going slow.

But cutting? Weird.
Cutting, starting out, going slow, the razor gliding softly against the skin;
It itches.

It's odd, that itch.

You would expect pain and eventually that will come.
But this soft caress, the susurration of the steel through the tiny hills and valleys of your flesh, why would that itch?



link]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=435feed@mungbeing.com (mckenzee) The Head
As a person, I am a bit of a failure. But as a detached head, I am free. No one expects that much from a singular head, I make a living telling fortunes. Free from my body, my mind roams far and wide, bringing back wisdom and strange tales from dark regions of the soul.

"You will go on a fantastic journey." My face lights up like a jack-o-lantern, but maybe it's the box you've made for me. It's like a gypsy's wagon. A family stands in front, the same look of expectation and horror on their faces. You step up to warn the children not to touch or poke me.

I often fall asleep in mid-sentence leaving the desperate soul hanging on my last word. Because I am only a head, people fear me like they never did in my walking life. "Shh, don't wake him," you say, closing the box, "he really needs his sleep. It's that hot little brain working like crazy." Thanks. I really appreciate this. I mean, you get the cash, but I get to just be and that's important to me.

And now, I'm on tv. I get to say anything I want and people love it. They're hanging on my every word. You see, I'm telling them shit that never got said. They nod their heads and look at each other, "He's got it. I never thought of that, but it's true." You people with bodies, you forget your heads, you forget your bodies. You never knew what you had.

David Letterman loves me. Laughing, flashing his famous teeth, he tells me he wants me back on the show. He says I could be the next Chris Elliot. "You can sit right here on my desk, and just say whatever is on your mind." He rubs his hands together. "It'll be better than having Harvey Pekar on."

I sign the contract with pen and mouth, and don't really get a chance to check it out because of the angle. Instead he keeps me in a room back stage and consults me as an oracle every show. "Come on and give up the zany stuff, or I'll squeeze you like an edible gourd." The man is really crazy, as in bad, evil crazy. After 20 years of this he'll do anything to keep his ball rolling and I am the boulder he rolls in Hell to the top of the latenight rankings.

I will crush him as I roll down. I threaten Dave that if he doesn't give me equal billing, I'll bring this show down. I'll ruin NBC. In one skit, Dave has me done up as the Wizard of Oz, replete with flames shooting up all around me. I insult the president, Dave's suit and the New York Yankees. Dave thinks I'm going too far.

I stop hoping you will come and rescue me. You're pissed about those tickets I promised. Full of my own hubris, I neglect our relationship until we cease to talk to one another.

The last straw in my television career is when I insult the network's parent corporation. Dave tells the coffee delivery guy to set me out on the sidewalk. "I'll haunt you in your dreams, Letterman!" I scream as I'm roughly escorted out of the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Some teenagers from Brooklyn find me and take me home. They teach me to rap. I am a novelty at parties and they laugh at me. I am not an incredible rapper, but the word is getting around, so these guys are starting to charge at the door and the party never stops. The kid who lives here has his mom totally cowed, she just sits in the corner staring at me, making mean faces. Sometimes she yells through the noise at me, "You're the cause of all this trouble, Humpty Dumpty." I'm nervous about my fate.

After several days of relentless music and drinking, the party dies down and all the kids fall asleep. Wandering her house, looking at the destruction, she spies me resting on a pile of fast food wrappers. She grabs me by the hair. "This party is over and you are getting the Hell out!" "Please! Hold on a second, let me call my friend." She won't listen to me. She just takes me a couple of blocks and puts me in an abandoned shopping cart full of random junk. She is kind enough to put me under some dirty old clothes so I don't freeze to death.

There is darkness. Then there is movement. Someone pushes the cart off the street to a squat in an abandoned subway tunnel somewhere in Manhattan. I had read about this one time.

"I thought they moved all you people out," I say. "We just got bored and moved back." I am surprised to find that they treat me with some respect, but all I can think about is salad bars. Around a fire made from pallets, I dream of lying among the kale, just ogling the colors and smelling all the scents. It is like a symphony of odors, each item is a theme, with the pasta nearby dominating the composition. It occurs to me here that I haven't had sex for a long time.

I think I could be truly happy if some young woman carried me around in her purse. She could take me out and touch my cheek with her soft hands. We would spend long hours staring at each other, trying to read the other's thoughts. I am the only one who understands her. If she would leave her asshole boyfriend who falls asleep after sex, we could go away somewhere, anywhere. We'd make up new stories for everyone we meet. "He's an independent film director," she tells the waitress. I can barely hold my laughter. When the waitress fills our coffee and leaves, we crack up. "I've never had this much fun in my life," she admits, not even in college when she did a lot of drugs and had unprotected sex with all her friends.

I am so happy, and I tell her so in words that cause everyone in the Midwestern diner to join hands and start ascending to heaven like an apotheosis. The fat trucker sprouts wings and shoots me in the ear with his heart-tipped arrow. Nodding her head, misty-eyed, not looking at me, she tells me, "Unfortunately, I have to get back to work on Monday."

The diner collapses around us. The trucker falls on a chair, breaking it. "I really can't take you home because my roommates will get suspicious and my landlord won't allow another person in the apartment. They get mad if Rod stays over too much." I summon up some strength to express myself through my collapsing reality, "Forget all that. Forget Rod. It's just us and the road." She won't hear it. She's stopped listening to me and all her words run together as she is paying the bill, leaving a 12 percent tip that really embarrasses me, fixing her eyeliner and walking out of my life.

The waitress figures that I am the rest of her tip. She won't even treat me like a human being. She keeps looking for the batteries, turning me around in her hands. "I've heard of stuff like this. You're like the Singing Bass." My humiliation is complete when she raffles me off to pay for the cost of repairing the diner. I go home with a Mennonite family and we spend long hours in quiet contemplation. When they read to me from the Bible, I reveal my heretical ideas on religion. They decide they can't have me living in the house. "Put the demon head in the barn, son."

The quiet children take me out to the barn where they bust out the biggest stash of killer bud I have ever seen. "Pops thinks this hemp is for rope, but we got some seeds from a friend who went to Amsterdam. This seed here is from Bali. "The kids all ask about the big city. All they can think about is growing up and leaving. In my stoned reverie, I tell them that they really have heaven right there, that everybody in the city is just yearning to leave and go to the country and live the simple life. They call me a liar and show me that they are all sadistic monsters, these quiet, well-behaved children. They practice throwing their knives at the barn floor around me. One throw severs my left earlobe and I begin the bleed. This stops the game and they need to go in to dinner anyways. I am left out in the cold, drafty barn.

At this point, I am in danger of being eaten alive by rats and if it wasn't for the barnyard cat saving me, I would have suffered my greatest fear. Besides being alone, that is. The cat is very playful and takes a liking to me, but I yell at it when it gets rough and scratches up my nose. Luckily, it didn't go away and I spend the cold night with the cat wrapped around my face. The fur is in my nose and mouth and I'm having a little difficulty with it because I am slightly allergic to the dander, but all in all, I am very grateful to this animal.

That night, I have a vision of my future. I am comforted by the thought that I do finally get to save the planet, as it is my life-long ambition. I start a religion and multi-level marketing scheme based on solar energy and worship of the sun. With the failing environment and lack of comfort from the great world religions, this very simple, materialist perspective gives comfort to the torn spirits of humans everywhere. Backed by some Silicon Valley millionaires, we start the organization which catches on with our core which is basically surfers and nudists from Mendocino County, but from California it quickly spreads. Some of the New Age message is lost on people, so I quickly arrange for splinter groups to acquire the teachings of other world religions to make flavors that are compatible with just about any tradition. The Christians really dig the homonym Son and Sun, so our closest star is identified with Jesus. You get the idea. In some areas, my image appears iconic, my features on the solar disk. Some wear a medallion with my face on it surrounded by rays. They will kiss it before they sunbathe or put up solar panels that they get with huge discounts from the church along with incredible government tax subsidies.

This rosy future is blemished and my organization threatens to collapse as cases of skin cancer skyrocket. I am denounced publicly and hounded by the other world religions. The Time Magazine cover story is "The Setting of the Sun-King?" In our darkest hour, a bio-tech company and one of my many financial acquisitions synthesizes an anaerobic microorganism that produces ozone and can do so in the upper atmosphere. NASA, which I picked up for a song during some recent privatization madness, dramatically sends an aging, barely functional Space Shuttle to distribute pods of the bacteria across the ozonosphere. The plan is a success and the ozone layer is exponentially increasing.

It works a little too well and people who are not nudist sun worshippers suffer from a vitamin D deficiency from the paucity of ultraviolet rays coming through to the skin which, as we all know, is how the body produces the nutrient. Fortunately, the same bio-tech company creates a gene that enables humans to produce the vitamin from the rest of the light spectrum. The gene, modified from corn, also causes people to start photosynthesizing. Freed from having to eat, the digestive system atrophies giving people a very slender socially appealing look, so the therapy becomes very fashionable. The church offers members the therapy as a sort of baptism for free. The only drawback is the green complexion.

With all the green people, it occurs to many that we look like aliens, or what the popular idea of aliens was in the 50s. A popular philosopher muses that we become what we mythologize. She notices many circumstances where technology has enabled us to do what gods and monsters can do, and to literally become them. Her grand opus "Myths of the Future" posits that time and myth have an inverse relationship. The book starts fads of reconstructive surgery where people modify themselves to become their heroes, icons and historical figures. At our marriage ceremony, she puts me on her shoulder so that we look like a two-headed beast.

For awhile, we complete each other, but our relationship deteriorates as we become addicted to psychoactive nectars that the biotech company derives from the union of several powerful shamanistic vegetables. Drug-addled and increasingly confused by the strange world we helped create, our minds warp into shapes that could barely be called self-conscious. Kept alive by a nutrient bath that my biotech caretakers created, I spend my days suspended between thoughts, my features gradually distorting. It takes years to remember the time you took me to the park and set me down on the bench beside you, where we would just watch people.
]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=487feed@mungbeing.com (Spacemummy) Body Drawings http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=480feed@mungbeing.com (Claudio Parentela) The Body Politic http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=492feed@mungbeing.com (Michael Dickinson) Septizon Mating But it was more than a simple, formless pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy rush forward, as it could also be discerned that one and all adopted a variety of bodily postures and positions. Some ambled doubtfully forward with arms and legs crossed, others uncertainly advanced with limbs cast out wide, and yet others bent forward as still others affected the opposite posture. These seemed to be the basic positions, but there were endless variations within them in a play of invention, and even competition, tempting perfection, to be seen in their rush and advance into the interior precincts of the glass dome.
And such began the breeding season on Septizon.
It was known when the orb of moon waxed full on a field of night, it commanded the tides to surge in bay, cove and in the interior wends of the denizens of Septizon. Upon the wave rode a fleet of intentions built of that same powerful fecundity that compelled the rush to the dome, in the name of the preservation and the extension of the species.
The glass dome, seemingly insatiable, endlessly drew in a stream of Septizon beings until even its interior confines began to fill, assembling in a vast ring about the base of the dome that kept open a space within that all took a very great care in not intruding upon, not transgressing its boundaries, creating a rather frightful density of person in the ring, all the more oppressive by the continuing affectation of their selected postures. And, thusly, after the last stragglers had issued into the dome and had joined their fellows, a cry was sounded by one of their number, lost in the mass of the assemblage, a primal howl that further mocked the pretensions of this race to culture, to civility, to grace and declared them but rutting individuals in a forest morass destitute of any impulses higher than that of sating the commands of the most pure carnality.
The cry was indicting, and communicable in the extreme, as one, and then another added their howling, taking up the call, cry uniting with cry, high tones and bass ones, short bursts and far lengthier specimens intertwining in the air above them, each cry directly relatable to posture adopted by its generator. Soon vast numbers had added their howls to the din until a massed roar held dominion. Having communicated its increase, Urgency now commanded the act itself, the deed that had impelled their arrival into the confines under the vast, glass dome.
All suddenly fell quiet.
And thus, they bred.
There was no embrace that led to a fervid coupling between anyone under the dome, no union of torso and intertwined limb in salacious declaration in this communal array, and not simply because their odd postures would not admit of this; instead their garb was parted by generative organs bursting forth and belching heavy plumes of smoky mist, of various colours and depth of shades, some pale and some heavy and rich in a given hue. Despite the great density of these smoky plumes, they had scant difficulty in celeritously ascending to the highest reaches of the dome's interior and soon thereafter formed a mutlicoloured cloud that seemed to be mixing its contents together, uniting and separating and reuniting, a rambunctious cumulus above them. Each affected bodily posture seemed to produce a plume of a corresponding colour; the adeptness and success of each such affected position was measured in the depth of the tint of each colour, a testimony before all of one's virility. As each plume led directly back to its progenitor, those of a wan hue soon attracted open contempt and flashed glances of accusation as the unfortunate source of these misbegotten plumes blanched and gulped and fought to subsume their terror and court hope that all would yet turn out well, that the rancour of their current circumstance would yet relent, and even the reproach of nearby eyes.
At least the last was granted them, as a rival to them was offered in the evolving cloud above them still fed by seemingly thousands of coloured plumes streaming to the upwards. Until now a delight of picture, it now added the attribute of sound, a low rumbling as the mixing within seemed to be reaching some conclusion. A crackling akin to that of electricity ensued, and then yet more rumbling trailed in its stead. A silence then followed in its wake as the garishly coloured cloud then faded to a stark white, its energy rushed inward along a thousand courses and met within the cloud. A vast peal of thunder, of an intensity that Zeus would have been proud to have produced, bounded out of the cloud, sending a tremour throughout, rattling the glass above them, announcing an airy nativity was at hand.
The streams of plumes at once ceased from all those gathered below, in response to the spectacle above, and a thousand necks craned upwards, staring at the cloud. Yet one more peal of thunder redounded throughout the dome's interior, and filled everyone with a start and a jolt.
Suddenly a most peculiar variety of rain began to fall.
In their twos, first one set, and then another and another set slowly descended from the cloud, miniatures of those below them, soon enough in sufficient numbers to be gifted with the term, 'en masse' downwards onto that central portion of the dome's interior kept scrupulously vacant. Its condition of the uninhabited was now confounded by the alighting of the first sets onto its space, some perfect specimens of the race, a presentation pleasing to the eye and the dictates of the bodily taste of the race of Septizon. These pairs were driven on by instinct as they split apart from one another upon reaching the floor and raced to one or the other of their parents, cutting through the assemblage, and upon reaching them, clasped arms about parental legs and looked up at them with eyes made of candy. These were then swept up into their arms, proudly beaming over their child made from the deepest and richest of hues possible to a plume of their begetting smoke and receiving the accolades of those nearby outwardly as these same neighbors inwardly nursed a jealousy and a concern for their lot, as they awaited their approach of their own issue.
And such concern was indeed warranted as the grim issue of the collision of the wan and pale plumes in the slowly dissipating cloud above now too fell in pairs to the floor. These misshapen creatures seemed almost caricatures of the race, at once attracting the fancy of contempt. Every eye accommodated a brood of the deepest repugnance as the crowd gave these offspring racing towards their unfortunate parents a very wide berth as though fearing an irremediable contagion. This was only inflamed as the offspring attained the location of their parents and grasped their legs, looking up at them with eyes filled with gall, the event accusing and indicting them as about them, other parents shone in the midst of praises, a process repeated on and on until the cloud had issued its last burden and the last wispy remains dissipated back into the ether.
A second cry in dome now arose, unique to the unfortunates who scorned their offspring and trembled over their situation.
Septizon was a world wholly conscious of body types, esteeming and celebrating some and holding others in open contempt by past arbitrary whims now given the force of statutes. The violation of these codified dictates of taste attracted the full vengeance of the law.
And suddenly, brandishing weapons, an ebon-clad detachment of officers descended upon the dome to satisfy that vengeance and severely punish the offenders of codified taste.
And as candy watched, gall began to run.]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=488feed@mungbeing.com (Buzzsaw) Boobs Are Nice
Rollerderby was the leader of the "'zine revolution" I participated in briefly (I self-published Wow! in Vancouver c. 1993-1994). Lisa and a handful of others helped liberate me from the stifling confines of a cultural straightjacket. Lisa Crystal Carver: the real deal. Like Robert Crumb, an artist who let it all hang out for the world to see. Her id was seldom contained, and her zeal for life led her to seek out myriad pathways to adventure. Her cacophonous performance troupe Suckdog destroyed and titillated; it was at times artful, at times awful, but always in your face ready to challenge you, perhaps goad you into taking a more fully participatory role in your own destiny.

I lost Lisa as I chased my own dreams and battled nightmares. I saw a stack of Rollerderbys in a record store one day last year. A smile escaped, and perhaps a wisp of nostalgia; I bought as many as my wallet told me I could that day, and I took them back home and read them. My nostalgia disappeared quickly. While framed by aspects of nineties indie culture, the writing itself, on its own, was as raw as ever, it hadn't ripened though I was now a thirty-something geezer. Lisa Carver cut to the bone a decade later, a whole lifetime wiser. Good art, literature has the power to endure and transcend time, and make you feel things in new ways, provoke new perspectives in thinking.

It was finally time for me to track Lisa down, to rediscover her, look at her with fresh eyes as a contemporary. It turns out she took a trip back into the nineties recently herself, penning Drugs Are Nice, a memoir of the wild days of her youth when she gave underground culture the smack on the ass it deserved. "Oh, this is great," I thought. "I have a good excuse to get in touch with her!"

Lisa's written much about sex, her body and the bodies of others, her post-Rollerderby work appearing in magazines like Hustler and Nerve.com. Ah, she'd be a perfect interview for the body-themed issue of MungBeing, but what on Earth would I ask her? I decided to strip her down in text and walk my fingers down her virtual body, from her princess crown to the sole of her soul.

jody: My hair has been slowly getting greyer, and I'm noticing a receding hairline. Hairdressers used to compliment me all the time when I was a kid, saying things like, "you have such a rich, full head of hair." No more. But I dig it anyway, don't fear this aging process so much. Finally, I actually have some control over how it looks, it listens to me instead of does its own thing. What's the story with your hair?
You've had different 'dos, perhaps various colors...

Lisa: Yes, it's been all colors. And God help me, all perms. Now it's just dark with bangs swept to the side and usually a bun, because that way Boyfriend can play with my hair and mess it up and feel like a conqueror.

jody: I had this girlfriend once who convinced me shampoo was evil and unnecessary, that our hair is "self-cleaning." She was right. I discontinued using shampoo and all other hair products (except peroxide and dye), and so many of my hair problems disappeared: no more dandruff, greasiness, split ends, frizziness (especially frizziness!) Now I only use shampoo on an as-needed basis, like after camping, or if it starts to actually feel it needs a wash. I guess the only person who shampoos me regularly is my hairdresser. Do you use hair products?

Lisa: My first husband was like that. Short, unwashed hair seems to work for the men. I have long hair and sensitive skin. I have total confidence that you are right in your natural approach, jody, but I won't be taking it myself until I'm dead.

jody: I happen to be a rather hirsute fellow. For awhile I was self-conscious about it, it seems all these little hairless boys were The Sex of the nineties. Now I'm hoping the whole Ron Jeremy, Tom Selleck thing comes back so my body hair will be in vogue again. What do you do with your hair? Do you shave, let it grow? Do you like the feel of stubbly legs? Do you have a moustache you need to wax?

Lisa: I think I like the bear look for the menfolk. Don't like stubbly legs. No moustache. I shave my legs, but I'm not happy about it. I shave the bikini area, but only because there's no waxing joint in my town. I've been thinking a lot lately about waxing again. I read a dirty true story about this gal and her waxer. It hurts, and often the waxer will slap you on another area of your body when she pulls the strip up. Well, that wasn't enough in this case, and the waxer fingered the gal! While pretending she wasn't! I would like that. I love people pretending they're not doing something.

jody: I'm a big face man, it seems I'm incapable of being attracted to someone unless I can catch something in their eyes. I'm also a big fan of prominent noses, and have often pictured myself with a bigger schnoz. And the mouth, it's got to be the most sensual part of the body. I don't like the way I photograph, but when I look in the mirror I see a pretty good-looking devil.

Lisa: You should totally get a nose job making your nose bigger. They do chin implants, why not a nose hump? I broke my nose when I was dying my hair - tried to flip my hair up and bashed it against the tub so hard I passed out. Left the dye on way too long. I like the kind of Italian way I look now at least in one inch of my nose.

jody: Ouch! I don't know about a nose job, I tend to like my body as is, no radical alterations; I don't even have any tattoos or piercings, never have. A few years ago I had cavities in two of my wisdom teeth, both on opposite sides of my mouth. The dentist looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if he could fill them. "We don't do that, we pull them," he told me. I acquiesced. Then I felt this strange, profound feeling of loss, and started to think did I need to lose them, and my foreskin, my tonsils, my adenoids... Do you have any tattoos or piercings?

Lisa: I've kept myself unpierced and untattooed because I always fancied myself just about to be on the lam, running from either the FBI or a drug ring or maybe just the Portsmouth punks and I'd have to change my identity, slip through the cracks. I love the idea of it, though -- especially tattoos you will probably later regret. I much prefer people with a lot to regret over those with little.

link
jody: Regret, no regrets. I have a couple of women I'm seeing right now. Both of them received hickeys from me recently. Not trying to relive high school days or anything, it's just that sometimes I get a little carried away going after the neck, especially when most people seem so responsive.

Lisa: Yes, hickeys are underrated. People complain about them that they're immature. So is sledding, black eyeliner, dry-humping.... Most fun things are.

jody: Do you like your breasts? Have you always liked them? Did your relationship to them change when you became a mother?

Lisa: I better like my breasts - I paid $5,000 for them! I liked them before, too. But when I had my first baby and I got big boobs, I just didn't want to say good-bye to them. When I was around 12, I read that you could hypnotize yourself into growing larger breasts. Didn't work. Then when I was around 16 I realized guys really liked small breasts, contrary to what my mother told me, especially since I was skinny and immature.

jody: Oh, I am so embarrassed. I totally forgot you had a boob job, you used to write about it and everything. Okay, if I was a woman and had a boob job, I think my number one concern would be nipple sensitivity, as my man-nipples are just about my favorite things. How are your nipples doing? Did nursing feel different?

Lisa: It is breast reduction that makes you lose nipple sensitivity, not and#101nhancement. Nursing is great, sex stuff is great.

jody: I was at this party recently, making out on the bed in the bedroom, a couple of other people hanging around, door closed, only true sanctuary in the midst of party chaos. This woman came in with a couple of friends, took off her shirt and started showing off her tits and talking about them to her friends. They were curious about her boob job, wanted to see them and touch them. She actually seemed very passionate about the whole thing, she stayed in the room a long time talking about her breasts. Do people ask to see and touch yours out of pure curiosity? Have you ever encountered negative, judgmental attitudes about your decision to do this?

Lisa: Yeah, the first year or so I had mine I was talking about them all the time, everyone was feeling them. It was like I had a convertible GTO attached to me and I was letting people take a spin in it, not feel an actual part of my body. Then I had my second baby and they fell from their place just under my chin to a normal position. Now, no one looking at me naked would have any idea there's plastic in me, unless they were very carefully feeling me up. When I was talking about doing it, some people told me not to, because of the cutting-your-body factor and my breasts at the time were fine. This did not concern me because, A. I already do all kinds of fake things to my body -- insert contact lenses and now laser surgery, alter my hair and skin color, gain and lose weight and muscle. I don't feel that talking on a telephone is necessarily less real talk than doing it in person. I'm just not that concerned about the concepts of natural vs. artificial because I like both and dislike neither. And B., yeah my breasts WERE fine at the time, but I'll do what I like, thank you!

jody: Sorry for all the boob questions, I'm not even really a "titty man," but I find this whole boob job thing fascinating. Let's move on... let's see... armpits. I think the underarms are pretty underappreciated. I like to kiss and nuzzle my partners' underarms. For many people it's an erogenous zone, and I've met people surprised to discover this when I've gone in with my tongue.


Lisa: Good lord!

jody: Try it! Do you shave? Do you like the smell, or do you try to mask it with deodorant?

Lisa: I shave and deodorize. I am a product of my era. I wish I could be a hippy in this area, but I find that I cannot.

jody: Just for the record, despite my love of human body odors and my disdain for hair products, I am not a hippy. Okay. Next. Do you have Palmolive soft hands, or do you have calloused proletarian hands? Do you like your hands to be held or stroked?

Lisa: They're soft and white and elegant, despite years of waitressing and sun damage. They're piano-playing hands.

jody: I think tummies, bellies are pretty sexy, whether round or flat, narrow or wide, smooth or hairy.

Lisa: You think everything is sexy!

jody: Everything has the potential to be sexy, but all these parts aren't sexy on everyone. I'm pretty discriminating in my tastes, you know. I tend to go for the whole package, and personality, sexual chemistry, pheromones, I suppose, all contribute to whether or not I find this sexiness. But, thanks, "sexy" is a nice segue into discussing your "special lady parts." First of all, do you have a preferred term? I usually use pussy, an ex of mine likes saying "my down there." I imagine you probably have, like many of us, a great love for this particular area of the female body.

Lisa: I used to call it my cunny-na-na. Now I say between my legs or pussy or vagina or cunt or it or you-know or my parts or please. I don't particularly love it. I'm addicted to it. I try to get people to stick things in it all the time. I wish so bad I had a penis. I would fuck everything. Since we're being honest, I'll say that I hump (with clothes on, mostly) my boyfriend's thigh or bum all day, just for a second, imagining and wishing...

jody: Hey, you understand! That's what a lot of guys are like! We've got this prominent appendage sticking out all the time, it gets hard at the slightest hint of sexual stimulation. It's why I have to have sex, masturbate, at least ten times a week or more. Add up the hours, it's like a full-time job. When you rub against your boyfriend's thigh, imagining you have a penis, is this fantasy manifesting itself in your clit? Is your clit sensitive?

Lisa: I do not imagine my clit is a penis. Or I try not to. I don't let my daughter describe her parts as "I don't have a penis." She DOES have a vagina/vulva, etc. Having our organs tucked inside and complicated does not make them LACK OF THE OTHER, SIMPLER, PROMINENTER thing. I hate it when little girls are described by their lack and not their have. A clitoris is not a shrunken little penis, Freud! It's a just-right-sized clitoris. I don't see anyone referring to the penis as an oversized, oafish clit. Do you? My ghost penis exists a little higher than where the clitoris is. It's great for ghostie poking, yet doesn't interfere with the action of the real, live clitoris.

jody: No, but perhaps cocks should be referred to that way: "oversized, oafish clit." I like that. Knocks Freud on his tooshie. Do you have more clitoral or vaginal orgasms?

Lisa: Of course I have (more) clitoral orgasms. No one has more vaginal orgasms than the other way! But it is very difficult for me to achieve bliss without getting simultaneously stuffed in the hole because I just think like that.

jody: I wouldn't say it's universally true that everyone has more clitoral orgasms. Some partners I've had and women I've talked to can't get off well using their clits. Viva la difference, with best wishes for everybody when it come to getting off. Let's see, what's next... thighs. This is a loaded question. A lot of chicks are really self-conscious about their thighs especially, I find. I've never understood it, give me a thigh to kiss and I'm happy. And I don't even pay attention to my own thighs, for all I know they could be hideous.

Lisa: I have good thighs because I've always been a runner, so I don't pay any attention to them. There's nothing to be upset about, and it's not like they are sensitive to touch or anything. They just get me across the room, mostly.

jody: Oh, the knees, just like the underarms for me. I like going in for the back of lovers' knees, another one of those little-known erogenous zones, if played right. Do you like the shape of your knees?

Lisa: Oh, my!

This space is punctuated with an awkward silence.

jody: I really like my feet, I think they're pretty damned solid and they look great, to boot. Maybe because I'm a Capricorn, a goat. I mean, I hardly ever trip or anything. But I'm not a fetishist, although I did have some wonderful toe sex once where I pleasured a girlfriend with my big toe.

Lisa: I don't like the feet. Except for mine, because we've been together a long time. I once gave a guy a foot-job at his request. He called it a Philly cheese steak. I thought this was gross, but I'm not one to deny people their gross desires.

jody: We all have gross desires. Live and let live.

And with that we ran out of body parts. Well, not really, I could've gone for all sorts of other things, we didn't even get to the inner organs. I enjoyed our all-too-short-lived textual experience, the naked exposure of her and#101nhanced breasts, the boldness of her dry humps, the aural pleasure of her cunny-na-na. Perhaps she'll return someday and allow me to dissect her brain.

Lisa's latest book Drugs Are Nice is available from Soft Skull Press.

]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=489feed@mungbeing.com (jody franklin) Requiem for Little Red Riding Hood http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=495feed@mungbeing.com (Kelly Moore) Four Inches Less
If I were 6'6" I'd be able to fit into fuel-efficient cars and drive them around and everything. Instead, I drive around in giant ass trucks that go through a tank of gas faster than a hot knife through butter. When gas got up to $3.00 a gallon here in sunny hellifornia, I was spending $95.00 to fill my tank up every week. That's just insane but, fucked if I know how to get my huge ass into a Kia.

If I were 6'6" I'd be able to go on more rides at Disneyland. The last time I rode Space Mountain, I had to ride alone in the car and put one of the safety bars over each knee. They remodeled it last year though and now I can't even sit down in the cars because they built them smaller. I can still ride The Haunted Mansion though, so that's cool. And Pirates Of The Caribbean too, as long as I sit in the front row of the boat. Most roller coasters are out of the question for the simple fact that most of them have safety bars that come down over your shoulders, locking you into your seat. I'm taller than those bars. On the plus side though, most roller coasters make me vomit.

If I were 6'6" I wouldn't have to buy most of my clothing online. I could actually walk into a store and say, "Hello, I'd like to buy a shirt." And the salesman would say, "Of course, sir, what size are you?" And I'd be able to reply back with something other than, "Four extra tall." Now that I'm thinking about it, I can't remember what size shirt I wore when I was only 6'6". That was literally twenty years ago, back in my junior year of high school. But anyway, it'd be great, I'd be able to buy shirts that weren't $35.00 each. My annual clothing bill might not resemble someone else's heroin bill. That'd be cool.

If I were 6'6" I'd merely be "tall" and not "Holy shit, look at the size of that guy!" What a luxury it would be to walk down the street and merit only a "huh" instead of a "goddamn." This may just be wishful thinking but if I were only 6'6", my height might not invite so many comments. And I get so many goddamn comments. The fastest way to lose my respect for you is to ask me how tall I am before knowing my name. I've been eating at this Chinese place for over five years now. It's where I took my wife on our first date, it's where we had our rehearsal dinner, I eat there every Saturday and, when I have the money, one or two days a week on top of that. I've known the owners for most of that time, they've met my family and they know the names of all my friends. When I show up without my wife, they ask how she is and if she's still busy at the bakery. These people know me and the first time the owner asked me how tall I was, was literally last Saturday. For that alone, I'd take a bullet for him, I love that guy. Oh and, hey, you know what? I don't care how fucking tall your daughter's boyfriend is. Or your cousin's boss, or your father's secretary, or whoever the hell. Okay? So shut the fuck up about it. And who cares where I get my goddamn clothes? And my shoe size is 15 and I don't play basketball or football and I never fucking did because I hate sports and I don't care how badly the Rams need me this year, okay? And you know what else? The Rams don't fucking need me. I have virtually no cartilage in my knees and my ankles have degenerative tissue disease, whatever the fuck that is, and my back and shoulders hurt all the time, and I'm thirtyfuckingsix! If I were to set foot onto the gridiron, I'd be a fucking cripple inside half an hour because, in football years at least, I'm an old man with bad joints! Oh yeah, the Rams need me all right; I'd save the day! Because I'm so tall! Some day, I'm going to follow Steve Jobs lead and have a thousand of the same shirt made up so I can just wear the same thing every day. Only instead of a black turtleneck, I'll be wearing this:


If I were 6'6" I'll bet I'd feel like I belong in this world. Though, come to think of it, I wouldn't put a whole lot of money on that.

On the other hand, I've been able to avoid about 99% more fights than every other guy who spends as much time hanging out in shitty bars as I have. I can intimidate people just by breathing loud and staring at them, and I've totally used that to my advantage. I don't really understand why this is, but when I put on a tie, I command more respect than the guy in the tie next to me a lot of the time. That's been helpful to me in my career. And, once in a while, people I don't know treat me like royalty just because I'm so damn tall. But you know what? I'd trade it all for four inches less.]]> http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=523feed@mungbeing.com (Tim Hatch) Recipes http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_6.html?articleID=301 Recipes -- Sensual Chocolate Drizzle Inspired by Amanda Woodward


BACKGROUND


There are many ways to approach the idea of the body and its relationship to food. One could think about recipes that are beneficial to the body, that work to keep it healthy. Or perhaps the focus could be on a particular subset of food that satisfies certain criteria (sweet, spicy, etc) and affects the body in certain ways. Or maybe the relationship can be expresses as a function of hipness. Or maybe, just maybe, the attention should be placed squarely on food that can be eaten directly off the body. Here then is our recipe for a sensuous chocolate drizzle to be eaten directly off the body.

After extensive research and countless (3) hours of experimentation, this recipe proves to be the one that satisfies our main objectives - namely, the chocolate remains drizzleable after it is cooled, the consistency is smooth but not too runny, the flavor is interesting but not distracting, and finally that it is not too sweet and doesn't leave a film in your mouth. The recipe also has to be quick and easy to prepare so as not to interfere with any of your dining fun.

A bottle of chocolate syrup might seem like the easiest acceptable method but in our testing we found that bottled chocolate syrup is way too sweet for this purpose, leaves a sticky film over everything including the inside of the mouth, and can actually stain fabric. That's not the right product for this job. We needed something that would enhance the experience, not create a sticky sweet mess. That's up to you.

Not only is this delicious chocolate drizzle satisfying when eaten off the body, but it complements a variety of foods that you can work into your meal in one way or another. It tastes great with strawberries, cantaloupe, and cherries. And all of those additions just happen to be aphrodisiacs! Have fun!

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INGREDIENTS